27 August, 2012

Memories

My first good memory of Belgium
is probably the first thing I remember doing when I got here: my first race. I
did a post on it way-back-when but to recap briefly, I won alone
and beat some pretty good guys. It was a massive boost for my CV and my
confidence and it had me on a high for about the next three weeks!

Good piece of glass.

Last year after I’d finished
university I came out with two other guys and we stayed next door to the
manager, in a stinky, dirty, horrendous one bedroom place for six weeks. This
year some of the new GWR riders did the same but unfortunately for them there
were five of them, and it was bad enough for us with three! Turning up to see
them sitting on the doorstep (as the team manager had neglected to pick them up
from the station and they’d had to hitchhike) then watching their initial
reactions, was very funny from the other side!

Belgium has a rapid effect on the GWR boys.

Living with a group of
like-minded friends is very fun, and the reason most people go to university;
and being here in Belgium has been no different. Despite only knowing two of
the other five riders at the start of the year we’ve all got pretty tight. Boys
being boys as time has gone on we’ve all lost our grip on reality a bit, living
in the cycling bubble and doing little else. This has led to plenty of house
oddities, starting with excessive nudity (which I think I should perhaps take
the most stick for having spent too much time at nudist beaches in my
childhood). Next up is language which has slipped from bad, to worse, to
explicit military strength blaspheming. This is closely linked with friendly
abuse between us all which is now at a level that to an outsider must appear as
abject hate!

Standard stage race behaviour.

My best stage race of this year
brings back some good memories too. After getting smashed in for every tour of
the year so far, going to Deux Sevres and getting third was awesome. I was
attacking the yellow jersey on the final stage up climbs (what the flip?!) and
all whilst proudly displaying large biro penises on my numbers; an act of
revenge courtesy of Josh Hunt.

This was what caused the backlash!

Cycling full time does take a lot
of hours, what with training, stretching, eating, cleaning bikes blah blah
blah. However, through effective time management we still made time to build a
mega cool raft! I didn’t get an engineering degree (Masters people!) for no
reason.